Jacques Monod and theistic evolution

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by W. Peter Gadsby

Jacques Monod was noted for his contributions not only in his field of molecular
biology, but also in philosophy. He was a close friend of the French philosopher,
Albert Camus. Monod’s book, Chance and Necessity, published in 1970,
concludes with these words:

… man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe,
out of which he emerged only by chance. Neither his destiny nor his duty have been
written down. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.

With Francois Jacob, Monod did much to elucidate the way in which genes regulate
cell metabolism by directing the biosynthesis of enzymes. With Jacob and Andrew
Lwoff, Monod was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1965.

Jacques Monod died in mid-1976, aged 66. On 10 June 1976, the Australian Broadcasting
Commission Science Unit broadcast a tribute to Monod which was entitled ‘The
Secret of Life.’ The program concluded with an interview between Monod and
one Laurie John in which, according to ABC compere Robyn Williams [himself an atheist
and fanatical anti-creationist—Ed.], Monod talked about his belief ‘that
life and evolution are without an ultimate purpose.’ His words should be pondered
by those who wish to reconcile a belief in evolution with faith in God:

Monod: If we believe in a Creator—if we feel the need for
this belief—it is basically for moral reasons, in order to see a goal for
our own lives. And why would God have to have chosen this extremely complex and
difficult mechanism when, I would say by definition, he was at liberty to choose
other mechanisms, why would he have to start with simple molecules? Why not create
man right away, as of course classical religions believed?

John: But then why do you suppose that theology should be automatically
as simple as possible when you admit that science is becoming more and more complicated?
Perhaps we don’t know why God just didn’t simply say, ‘There’s
man’. But there may be reasons.

Monod: I just don’t see the reasons, and no theologian has
given me, yet, a good answer to that question. And here again we come to what is
really an ethical attitude. Retreating into the mystery that cannot be approached
is, from the point of view of science, unethical. Our duty as scientists is to consider
that there is no mystery that is by definition impenetrable to analysis. Scientists
are well-accustomed to the general problem of analyzing something that they cannot
see. This is what we call the ‘black box.’ And in fact this is how physicists
have worked on atoms, because they never saw an atom—nobody has ever seen
an atom. And similarly, there were entities called ‘genes’ that nobody
could see, nobody knew what they were made of and still we could deduce a great
many properties of these entities from experiments. Now, if we wanted to try to
build what I would call, scientifically, a meaningful image of God, we would have
to assume a certain number of finite, precise properties; we would, of course, agree
that these properties could never be verified directly, but at least some of the
consequences of these properties would be predictable. As I see it, the modern (or
modernized) concept of God has none of these properties. The concept is assigned
no definition clear or precise enough to make it amenable to experiments, to observation,
which is, of course, a fundamental alteration in the minds of religious people.
This is not the classical concept of God.

John: Could I go back to the question of creation? As I understand
your point of view, and as it has been put to me, traditionally Christians have
said, ‘God created the world at the beginning; God at a certain stage created
life; God was at many points involved’ Then science came along and said, ‘No,
we can give you a determinist account of how the universe was created, and how life
came into being, entirely by scientific laws; we have no need of the hypothesis
of a theistic creator.’

Now, am I right in thinking that you have taken that one stage further, and said,
‘No, it isn’t in fact a determinist system; it is even more difficult
to imagine God because of the elements of randomness that occur at many points in
this story, and in fact, that are the whole thread holding the story together? God
couldn’t have decided in the beginning to use this mechanism to create man
because he couldn’t have predicted at the beginning that man would emerge
from it (emphasis added).

Monod: You are quite right. The advent of man was completely unpredictable,
until it actually happened.

John: So in other words, we would need a more sophisticated account
of creation. I wonder if I could take one sentence from your book and see how you
would regard it as an attempt at a more sophisticated account of the Creator. You
point to two factors in the emergence of higher and higher forms of life: one is
randomness, mutations; the other is natural selection. And what you say is that
randomness is the nourishment which natural selection uses. And you say it is not
to chance. but to these conditions—namely, of what is to be selected—that
evolution owes its generally progressive course, and steady development which it
seems to suggest. In other words, one could conceive of God using randomness, just
so long as there was the pattern which he was imposing upon the results of the chance
mutations.

Monod: If you want to assume that, then I have no dispute with
it, except one (which is not a scientific dispute, but a moral one). Namely, selection
is the blindest, and most cruel way of evolving new species, and more and more complex
and refined organisms … .

John: Cruel?

Monod: The more cruel because it is a process of elimination, of
destruction. The struggle for life and elimination of the weakest is a horrible
process, against which our whole modern ethics revolts. An ideal society is a non-selective
society, is one where the weak is protected; which is exactly the reverse of the
so-called natural law. I am surprised that a Christian would defend the idea that
this is the process which God more or less set up in order to have evolution
(emphasis added).

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